I just wondered what your thoughts were with regards to braking. Is it more economical to slow down using your gears or slow down using your brakes?

Also, does using cruise control use more mpg?

I have a 56reg C-max ghia 2ltr diesel by the way.

Many thanks

My opinion is I just let the gas off and roll when trying to slow, otherwise I dip the clutch then bring it back, ocassionally use gearbox to slow down, but rely on brakes only when I need to stop quickly.

The use of cruise control IS more fuel saving than relying on you sitting with your foot say at 3000rpm, if you use your foot you'd tend to be ajusting the rev's a fraction one way or the other(using more fuel) where as the cc just lets the revs stay constant (hope you understand that).

The use of cruise control IS more fuel saving than relying on you sitting with your foot say at 3000rpm, if you use your foot you'd tend to be ajusting the rev's a fraction one way or the other(using more fuel) where as the cc just lets the revs stay constant (hope you understand that).

This is true when driving on perfectly flat roads - however, when hills are involved, you're much more efficient to be off the cruise control. Cruise control (especially a basic system like Ford's) tends to have two settings - throttle off, and throttle full. Accelerating at full throttle in 5th (or 6th gear) up hill on CC is less efficient than anticipating, and gently increasing the throttle or even dropping a gear.

Back to the original question - the answer is that neither using the brakes nor engine braking is the most fuel efficient way to stop or slow down. Anticipating, and effectively rolling to a stop is the best way. You can stop just as well 4th or 5th as you can in 1st with this type of driving, so change down to first just as you're about to come to a halt.

The exception to this is of course when slowing for corners, here you need to change directly to the gear you feel is appropriate for the corner (again, anticipation is the key). There is nothing less efficient than being in too high a gear and then trying to accelerate out of a corner.

I tend to just try and leave plenty of a gap, especially in traffic. You get so many people who race up behind the car in front, slam on their brakes, speed up, brake etc. It wastes fuel (especially with the price of it) and just causes more wear on your brakes/tyres. So I leave a gap, put the car in 2nd gear and just chug along nice and slowly leaving enough of a gap so if traffic bunches up, I only have to ease off the gas or maybe tap the brakes every now and again. It's less annoying to people behind probably 'cos then they haven't got to see your brakes lights on constantly lol. That's another thing I hate, people who don't seem to know how to use their handbrakes and in the dark you're sat behind them with their brake lights annoying you.

My father's Colt has cruise control and I tend to use it on one main road in my area, which is a 4 mile stretch with a 40mph limit. There's been lots of people caught speeding on this particular road as it's wide and open and the majority of a time people rush along as they've come straight out of the traffic of town onto this road. I'll switch on the cruise control and just allow that to keep my speed and give my right foot a rest. I've never had a look to see how it effects the MPG, but I will check this out the next time I go along this road.